The Alps (Blu-Ray)

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All Rise...

Judge Clark Douglas has not climbed the Eiger, but he once visited an Alpine-themed mini-golf course.

The Charge

One man. One Eiger. No sanctions.

The Case

The Alps tells the story of John Harlin III, a man born in Switzerland
whose father died attempting to climb the great Eiger, an extraordinarily
dangerous mountain. John has spent the majority of his life in America, but he
has recently decided to go back to Switzerland. "As the editor of the
American Alpine Journal, I love to write and to climb," he says. This film,
of course, is primarily concerned with the latter of Mr. Harlin's two loves.
John Harlin III has determined to conquer the very mountain that conquered his
father. Will he succeed?

I must say, I've always found these Imax films to be reliable sources of
edutainment (emphasis on the "tainment"). This one in particular
demonstrates the sheer indestructibility of Imax films. The Alps really
ought to be rather uninteresting. I can't remember many documentary subjects
quite so dull as John Harlin III. Don't get me wrong, he seems like a nice man.
But aside from the fact that he climbs huge mountains, he doesn't really seem to
have anything interesting to say. "I like climbing mountains," he
says. Indeed. There is a moment in this film when a young girl asks, "What
kind of rocks are on the mountains?" Harlin pauses for a moment and
replies, "Oh, there are a lot of rocks. There's, uh, limestone,
and…uh, granite…and other rocks such as that." It sounds
agonizingly boring, and it probably would be if the presentation weren't quite
so strong.

The film benefits from a wide variety of attributes. The first is, you
guessed it, the jaw-dropping images of the Alps presented here in glorious
1080p. If the beauty of nature is the sort of thing that tickles your fancy,
then you will be thrilled to simply be given the opportunity to look at this
film. When Harlin starts to drone a bit about one thing or the other, the film
wisely doesn't spend much time observing him, but offering us terrific aerial
shots of these majestic mountains. There's one particularly remarkable shot of
an avalanche that gives us a first-hand view of what it would look like to get
overwhelmed by such a thing. Every once in a while, narrator Michael Gambon (Layer Cake) pops in to say something
about how the mountains have been formed and changed over time.

The transfer here is just splendid, with a rich color palette and a steady
stream of "knockout" shots. The visuals and the audio work together
nicely to create a very immersive experience…the sound design here really
does provide a cool surround sound experience. Like many Imax films, this one is
also graced with a rich soundtrack. Majestic orchestral music is provided by
Steve Wood, whose soaring string swells never seem over-the-top or inappropriate
when contrasted with these lush visuals. The movie is also graced with some
songs courtesy of Queen (well, 15-second snippets of songs, anyway), and
original solo guitar work from Brian May. The solo guitar sequences are pretty
cool, even if they are quite reminiscent of Pete Haycock's guitar solos from
Hans Zimmer's score for the European version of the mountain-climbing film
K2. Derivative moments aside, the music here is really enjoyable, and is
given a very strong mix that makes one want to crank up the volume a bit
(apologies to my neighbors if I frightened them).

The primary supplement here is a 39-minute making-of piece that is quite
engaging, and actually offers more honest-to-goodness details than the feature
itself. The only real problem is that it's presented in standard-def
non-anamorphic widescreen, which is a big disappointment. Elsewhere, we get a
variety of lightweight goodies: a trivia quiz, a sheet of facts about the Alps,
a video montage (in HD) of Switzerland, a brief featurette about MacGillivray
Freeman films, a sheet of info about cinematographer Greg MacGillivray, and
trailers for about 10 other Imax films (all in HD).

The documentary runs a brief 44 minutes and has a tendency to focus on style
over substance. The trip up the mountain can basically be described as follows:
"Dad tried to climb the mountain. He failed. Now I'm going to try to climb
the mountain. Hey, look, I'm trying now! Okay, I made it. Hooray!" It
really doesn't get a whole lot more detailed than that. While I'm sure that
there is a compelling documentary to be made chronicling all the little details
of Mr. Harlin's experience, this one is focused on providing a short, sweet
audiovisual highlight reel of awesomeness. Like limestone, and, uh, granite and
such…this flick rocks.